


Before and Very Before

by ChibiSquirt



Series: Before and After (In a Long, Long Life) [3]
Category: Blood-Smoke Series - Tanya Huff, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/M, Henry Fitzroy is the Gift that Keeps On Giving, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Vampires Make Everything Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6757777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets beaten up in alleys a <em>lot,</em> but sometimes, there are more things in alleys than just bullies.  And sometimes, that's a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Very Before

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I go a little stream of consciousness. I'd been thinking about Steve knowing some Latin (not fluent, but some, yes, that is absolutely my headcanon), and then Vatican II, and then (since this was in the context of writing _THC on HBO_ ) wittering to Henry about how TERRIBLE that was...
> 
> And then I went to this place. And was encouraged to stay there. (I'm one of those little wraithy creatures Ursula the Sea Witch keeps in her cave; I basically live off of kelp, kudos, coffee, and comments.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter is in three parts; the third of them contains a POV character description of child sexual abuse. It creeped me the fuck out writing it, so if that's a trigger of yours, stop reading at, "The third time he meets him..." 
> 
> I normally don't do trigger warnings for the simple reason that I'm absolute pants at spotting them, but this one even a clod like me could see this one coming.

* * *

The first time he meets him, he doesn't remember.  

Steve is seven, and has gotten into a fight with the another boy from his street.  It's dark; they were playing baseball, but then Louis had lost the ball.  They started to scold him, make fun of him, and Steve remembers stepping right up to Vinny and asking, "What, like you ain't ever lost a ball?"  He'd been about to suggest looking for it in the morning, when it's light out, when any of them can  _see,_ but he wasn't given the chance.  

Vinny picks him up by the shirt - and, really, Steve is small for his age, but not  _that_ small, as he'll tell anybody who'll listen; but Vinny's got four years on him, and likes to show off - and drags him to the side, into an alleyway.  The first punch really doesn't hurt that much, but Steve is too young and too inexperienced to pretend that it does.  The second one hurts a lot more, catching him right on the chin, and Steve's head knocks back into the bricks so hard that he sees stars.  

"Don't you do that!" Vinny is saying, and Steve thinks,  _What shouldn't I do, be reasonable?_   Vinny punches him again, in the chest this time, but it doesn't hurt as much as his face.

"Don't you  _ever!"_ A kick to the shin sends Steve hopping on one foot.

"Don't you  _do that,_ don't you make me look bad in front of her!"  Vinny shoves him, and on one foot, he can't fight it, toppling over.  

"Hard to make you look bad in front of a girl, when you do such a great job on your own," Steve mutters, and maybe Vinny hears him.  Vinny is just aiming a kick at his ribs when he freezes, looking up.  It takes Steve a moment - his hearing is not the best - but then he hears it, too.

Something is growling.  

It's a low, steady growl, the kind a dog makes when it means business.  It's deep, like the big German dogs they keep around the sausage house to keep people from sneaking in and stealing the sausages.  And it's  _angry._

"Nuts," Vinny mutters, and he turns away from Steve, fleeing the alley.  Steve gulps, and picks himself off, brushing at the dirt which has marked his pants and the arm of his shirt, hoping he's not about to get eaten by one of those big German hounds.  

"Are you alright?" asks a voice, and Steve looks up.  

The man is pale, with creamy skin, pretty gold hair, and light-colored eyes, although there's no way he can tell what color they are in the reflected light from the streetlamps.  Besides, Steve's heard he's not so good at seeing colors, anyway.  He'd kind of like to see colors good for this man, though; there's something about him that makes Steve want to do all kinds of things, and he draws his spine straight so the strange man can't see how much Steve is hurting.  "I'm fine," he says.  The dog, he notices, has stopped growling.

"Good lad," the man murmurs, and it makes Steve feel warm inside, being a  _lad_ instead of a  _boy,_ but also (mostly) the way the man had said it.

The man goes to his knees beside Steve - Steve winces a little for the man's nice clean pants, and what was he doing in this part of town, anyway, wearing pants like that? - and checks him over, like Ma checking over the neighborhood women who come to her because they can't afford a doctor.  Steve knows he's fine, because even four years older than him, Vinny just ain't that impressive, but when the man swipes a hand over the back of Steve's head, there is a little blood there.  

"Here," the man says, turning him around, and then - Weird.  He presses a kiss to the back of Steve's head, just the way his Ma would.  Well, Steve thinks, maybe the man's got kids.  Then, though, Steve would have swore he felt the man _lick_ him, real fast like Steve wasn't supposed to notice, and Steve tries to pull away.

After a second, the man lets him.  

"You'll have a scab on the back of your head," the man says briskly.  "It's just a scrape, nothing serious; but I suspect your mother will notice?" And that's weird, too, because the man seems to be asking a question with that.

"Yeah, she will," Steve agrees with him.  "She's real picky about things like that."  Plus, Steve will have to explain what happened to his  _clothes,_ and can't you ever just keep things  _clean,_ Steven Grant Rogers?

The man relaxes, like Steve has answered his question even though Steve knows he can't have done.  He puts his hand on Steve's shoulders and looks into Steve's eyes.  "It's time to go home, now," he says, and his voice is deeper than before, a trace of an accent like Maisie Scott's dad has.  "Go straight there, and don't get into any more fights tonight."  

Steve almost feels like he's falling asleep, leaning forward into the man's arms, and everything in him wants to do just what the man says.  Except...  "I can't," he explains, feeling real bad about it and pulling back out of the man's arms again.

The man lets him go right away, this time.  He's staring at Steve, and his face is surprised, but somehow Steve gets the impression the man is more than surprised, he is  _shocked,_ just  _shocked,_ that Steve has said no to him.   _Well, maybe if you weren't so pushy, folk'd say no to you more often!_ he thinks, giving the man a glare.

"Why not?" asks the man, in a voice that says,  _oh, this had better be good._

Steve lifts his chin.  "I heard growling," he tells him.  "Vinny and I both did, it's why Vinny left.  Someone's got to tell the police a dog got out."

The man starts laughing.  

"It could be really dangerous!" Steve insists, feeling foolish because the man is laughing at him, and angry because he feels foolish.  

"Child," the man says, wheezing.  He drops a heavy hand on Steve's shoulder _again -_ Steve shrugs at it, but he doesn't budge - and looks Steve in the eye.  "Child, if I promise - give you my word, on the soul of my father, dead these many years - that I will ensure that the beast attacks no one else this night, will you please -  _please -_ go home and let  your mother take care of you?"  

Steve swallows, but that's a pretty serious vow.  "All right," he allows.  

"Go," the man orders, and Steve finds himself turning around before the word has finished echoing in the alley.  As he leaves, he hears the man muttering to himself; it sounds like, "And so I am taught to chain my beast."  

Steve could be wrong, though.  His hearing's not that great.

* * *

The second time he meets him he really only _sees_ him, and he doesn't remember this one, either.  

Steve and his mother are at church, listening to a reading from the book of Matthew.  Steve wonders sometimes about Matthew, ever since he noticed that where Luke talked about shepherd's boys being told by angels that the child was born, Matthew talked about Wise Men, who figured it out on their own.  Sometimes Steve thinks that if Jesus came today, Luke would be in Brooklyn with them, and Matthew would be in Manhattan; but other times, Steve thinks it's pretty cool that while Luke's people are depending on Grace, Matthew's are being worthy enough to earn it.  

Matthew's alright tonight, talking about helping other people out when they're down, Steve recons, if he's understanding the passage correctly.  Maybe he hasn't, though; Steve's not the most devout kid ever.

It's an evening service, because his Ma has been working long hours at the hospital, and they can't get to the ones during the day.  Ma's been asking Mrs. Barnes watch Steve while she's at work, and Steve thinks that's just fine, because Bucky's about the best friend a guy can have.  

The night time services don't have homilies, so Steve's restless in his seat.  He knows they don't have long to go before Communion, and that's his favorite part of the whole service.  

(He'd told Father Nico that, and the Father had looked at him oddly.  "Well," he'd said, "If you're going to have a favorite part, I suppose that's a good one to pick.")

So now, Steve is jittery, twisting about in his seat, probably embarrassing his mother.  But it means he's looking at the door when the man slips in.  

Steve doesn't recognize him; it's been two years since the fight with Vinny (God rest his soul; Vinny died of the Whooping Cough last year.)  He can't hear what the man says, either, not from this far away, but he sure says  _something,_ because Sister Agatha has gotten in his way like crazy and is blocking him from stepping further into the church.

Steve likes Sister Agatha, who has a gentle smile for him most of the time (and when she doesn't, he deserves it.)  She's the head of orphanage that runs out of the church, and people say she loves it.  Sometimes, Steve wonders if she might not be doing God's work more than Father Nico is, but then, like now, he crosses himself, just in case he's wrong.  

Sister Agatha is pretty famous around the neighborhood for once taking off the veil of her habit, because there was a boy in front of her with a torn up arm from the factory, and she didn't have another cloth to hand.  So it's a pretty big surprise to see her practically hissing at the strange, pale man, trying to keep him out of the church.

As Steve watches, the man spreads his hands, a universal gesture meaning  _look, I'm harmless._ Sister Agatha tilts her head, though, and Steve can just imagine the look on her face:  skeptical, no-nonsense.  

The man gestures downward at himself, and for the first time, Steve notices that he doesn't look good.  His clothes are dirty and torn, like he's been in a fight, and there's one dark spot on his left calf which might be blood.  The man's hair is ruffled, too, and there's a bruise forming on his jaw, almost invisible because the man's standing half in shadows.  He holds his hands out, palms up;  _please,_ he is saying.

Sister Agatha's back and shoulders tense, and Steve thinks she might be afraid right now.  

The man shakes his head, tired, and looks up into her eyes.  Steve can't see his eye color from here, but he thinks it must be something pale.  He reaches out, briefly brushing Sister Agatha's cheek, but she knocks his hand away, furious. 

They both look around the church, one nonchalantly, the other worried, and Steve thinks maybe no one was supposed to see that thing with the cheek.  He doesn't see why not; Father Nico does that to him and the other boys all the time.  But the man is bowing his head, like he's done something wrong and is sorry about it, so maybe Steve really wasn't supposed to see it.  

Sister Agatha catches his eye and glares fit to scold the devil, and Steve turns around in his seat again, feeling guilty.  The next time he checks over his shoulder, both the man and Sister Agatha are gone.

* * *

The third time he meets him, he doesn't remember, either, but he does remember the consequences.  

Steve's mother is gone, locked away in a sanitarium for the TB, and Steve is living in the orphanage with Sister Agatha all the time now.  Sister Agatha is pretty great, and Bucky stops by all the time to hang out because telling his mother he's going to the church is pretty much never going to get him in trouble, and if Steve's Ma were here, everything would be great.  But she's not, and she's dying, and Steve's miserable.  He knows he's not being fair - not to Sister Agatha, who is nothing but kind even when he's an angry little bobcat of a person, and not to Bucky, who has been endlessly patient with Steve's megrims - but he can't help it.  He's lonely, and hurting, and the older boys pick on him all the time.

And Father Nico's being  _weird._

Steve doesn't want to tell Bucky or Sister Agatha about that, because he has the feeling he'll get in trouble if anyone ever finds out.  But it's queer, and Steve doesn't know how to handle it, and he's had enough experiences with bullies by now to know that if he doesn't react  _somehow,_ things will only get worse.  

It started out small, and, Steve knows now, long before he came to the orphanage.  Used to be, Father Nico would touch his cheek, and when he came to the orphanage, he started ruffling his hair, too.  That seemed pretty normal to Steve, so he didn't mind it.  But then, two months ago, Father Nico ran his hand down Steve's neck, and that _wasn't_ normal.  Steve wasn't sure  _what_ that was.  

If it had been anyone else, Steve thinks miserably, he might have told someone then.  Bucky, at least.  But Father Nico is the last person who should be doing something strange or wrong, and, Steve had reasoned, that probably meant  _he_ was wrong for objecting.  So he kept his mouth shut.

He wishes now he hadn't done that, because a week later, the hand hadn't stopped at his neck, reaching down to twist one of Steve's nipples through his shirt.  Steve hadn't said anything, shocked out of words, and also because, even though it had hurt a little, it had also felt kind of good.  He wasn't sure what to do with that feeling, and he'd left as soon as possible.  

Father Nico hadn't stopped, kept touching him in weird places:  weird places on Steve, _and_ weird places in the church.  And he's been pushing Steve further and further, just like the bullies do.  A month ago, he'd grabbed Steve's butt, like Steve was a dame and Father Nico wasn't a priest.  Two weeks ago, he'd rubbed Steve's johnson, which had felt so confusing that Steve actually ran away, hiding in the upper rafters of the church which were too small for Father Nico to edge out on.  

But then last week, he'd done it again, and when Steve went to run away again, the door was locked, so he'd had to stand there as Father Nico rubbed at him for what felt like _hours,_ even though really it was only five minutes.  When he was done, he'd opened the door to let Steve out and Steve had been shaking.  "Go on and play now, son," Father Nico had said, pleased with him.  "I hear your friend Bucky is here to see you."  

And then this week, Father Nico hadn't done  _anything._ It'd been driving Steve _nuts_ , because he knew, he  _knew_ the pattern bullies had, and it didn't  _go_ backwards.  No, Father Nico was pressing forward, and it'd been hanging over Steve like that sword in the story, and he was even jumpier and grumpier than normal 'cause he kept waiting for it to fall.  

And just now, it had, and Steve had felt a little relieved, a little grateful just to know what was up.  Father Nico had grabbed him by the neck, looking at him with great satisfaction, telling him that he's coming along nicely (coming along in  _what?_ Steve wants to ask, but doesn't), and telling Steve to come by his office tomorrow afternoon, because he has a surprise for him.  "You'll like it," he promises, and Steve's not sure he believes him, but he says, "Uh, sure," because what else can he do?  After Father Nico leaves, Steve swipes at his neck where he'd held him, because it's awfully wet.  

Then he'd gone to Sister Agatha's office, because she has this  _huge_ closet in there, one that locks.  She has the only key, but Bucky and Steve've been learning to pick locks, and Steve can get this one most of the time.  There's nothing ever even  _in_ the closet, just some really thick blankets, and Steve's been hiding in there pretty often since Father Nico started being so strange.  He's about to do it again, taking out the little kit that he keeps with his wallet (just a coiled wire and a couple of hairpins), when the door opens and a  _man_ steps out.  

The man looks familiar, and makes Steve think of incense, so he's probably someone Steve's met in the church, but he can't really place him.

He also looks  _furious,_ and he picks Steve up - not that much harder than when Vinny did it, God rest his soul - and charges across Sister Agatha's office, pinning him to the wall with a forearm across his chest.  Steve gasps, because it's frightening and his asthma is starting to act up.

"What do you think you are doing," snarls the man, and Steve has a moment to wonder at his accent, which is  _weird,_ it's all over the place, American and British and German and half a dozen things all at once.  Then the question penetrates Steve's brain and he moans.  

The man gives him a little shake, and Steve admits, "Hiding," in the voice of a boy who knows he's just lost his best cubby hole.  

The man pauses at his answer, though.  For the first time, he stops glaring at Steve and really  _looks_ at him, at the snot on his face and the darns in his clothes, and the misery in his expression.  And probably also at his build, because that's something that no one seems able to miss, with Steve.

The man steps back, setting Steve down on his feet.  He puts his hands in his pockets as if to signal harmlessness, but Steve isn't fooled, because his throat still hurts.  "Well," says the man, "it's a good spot for it, as that's what I've just finished doing in there, too."  

Steve doesn't say anything, because this has been a pretty bad week and the last ten minutes have been the worst part of it.  

The man tilts his head, as if he's listening to something Steve can't hear (which, to be fair, he might be), then offers Steve his hand.  "Come on, then," he says, and his voice is amused now.  "I'll let you wrap up in my blanket."

Steve gives the man a suspicious look, because he's learned about touching other men, now, but the stranger seems to be genuine in his willingness to let Steve hide in his closet, so Steve brushes past him and heads for it.  He's still got his lock picking set, so it's not like the man can lock him in.

The man makes another of his lightning-quick mood swings, though, as Steve passes by him.  "What's that on your neck?" he snaps, and for a moment, Steve is so scared he can't even remember.  

"Oh," he says when he finally does.  "That's just...  Father Nico likes to grab people by the back of the neck, and his hands were wet today."  It's a weird thing for a stranger to be concerned with, though, and Steve starts to brush at the moisture still lingering there.  

"Don't," snaps the man, and Steve draws back.  

He softens, and pulls out a handkerchief.  There's a little pitcher of water that Sister Agatha keeps by the window, and the man edges over to that, pouring a little on the hankie.  He waves it.  "Here," he says, "Just let me..." 

Steve nods, cautiously, and bends his head forward so that the stranger can reach the back of his neck.  The man's touch is gentle, almost apologetic except that Steve doesn't think this guy apologizes, much.  He's quick about it, cleaning off the liquid on the back of Steve's neck with the hankie and then blotting it dry with his sleeve.  When he's done, he kneels in front of Steve, taking his hands and wiping his fingers off, too, where they had gotten wet swiping at it.  

When he's done, then man looks up at Steve, and says, "Now.  Let's get you into that wardrobe."  He smiles, gentle again.  His eyes are hazel, green and brown together in the candlelight.  "The blue blanket, I find, is the most comfortable."  

Steve's not sure  _what_ to do with this, but he goes and sits in the wardrobe, comfortably cushioned on the green blanket, with his knees loose and comfortable near his chest.  The man starts to close him in, then hesitates, and takes something out of his pocket.  "Here's my key," he tells Steve, holding it up.  

Steve stares at him and doesn't take it.  "I thought Sister Agatha had the only key to this," he says suspiciously.  

When the man smiles, his teeth are very white, and it makes Steve's heart pound uncomfortably.  "Sister Agatha has the only  _other_ key," he says. "You can give this one to Sister Agatha when you leave."  He drops it in Steve's lap, and starts to close the door.  "Tell her Henry gave it to you."

Steve deliberately doesn't go to see Father Nico the next day, planning to pretend he forgot.  But Father Nico never asks, because he disappears that night, and no one ever sees him again.

* * *

The fourth time he meets him, he remembers every second.


	2. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this story has crept longer and longer. It was going to be a three chapter fic: Very Before, Before, and After. Then it was going to be a two-chapter fic: Very Before and Before. The part that was going to be "after" got split into its own separate fic on account of having a dramatically different tone, and that's complete, although unedited. (I had way too much fun with that one, so I'm really hoping to knock this one out fast so I can post it.) Then this one is started spreading, and is now going to be three or four chapters long.

_ This city,  _ Henry decides once again, _ is terrible.  _  There's too much crime, far too much corruption, not enough real leadership in the city by half.  He has managed to eke out a stronghold for himself, but even that has been difficult, and even now there are threats to it.

_ But no one looks twice at a man who lives only by night, here.  No one calls him a demon, because that's such a quaint, old-world a notion in this modern city...   _

He walks down a dirty sidewalk, rain splashing down on his hat and overcoat.   _ There, that's one thing you can say for this century; the fashions are certainly more comfortable.   _ Doublet and hose were never fun, and the wig trend was simply ridiculous.  

Smoked windows ahead of him flicker with candle-light from the bar within; the low building has only three stories, a short building which nevertheless has a solid bulk and, despite not looking like anything special, built far more solidly than anything else around here.  It's early - he'd gone out at midnight, unable to stand the dense closeness of the bar any more, and now he finds himself back at the bar before it closes, feeling fractious and peckish, and looking for a fight.  But Henry has learned that some nights, you just can't win, and he's beginning to suspect this is just such a one.  He has been hungry before; he will wait until tomorrow to Hunt again.

His bar staff is two women, each of whom could probably close the bar with one hand tied behind their back.  Tonight, with both of them, it should take all of twenty minutes to stack the stools, wipe the glasses, blow out the candles, and mop up.  Their duties technically include bringing stock up from the back, as well, but Vera and Daisy are  _ efficient;  _ it is most likely already done.  

Henry lets himself in via the back entrance and starts to head, weary despite not having done much tonight, for the stairs up to the apartments in the building, only to be startled by a loud  _ thump  _ coming from a bar that should have closed five minutes ago.  He pauses, head cocked…

_ "Stop it!  What are you, stupid?  You know what Mr. Fitz is gonna do to you when he gets back?"   _ Vera's voice is scared, but strident enough over top of that that no one else would notice.  

_ "Mr. Fitz was spotted an hour away, not twenty minutes ago,"  _ an unfamiliar male says, and Henry's eyes narrow. _  "He isn't comin' for ya." _

...and steps back towards the rear door of the bar.  

_"Hey, c'mon, leave 'em alone,"_ says a second, unfamiliar male voice. _"What'd they do to you, huh?"_

_"Get out of here, kid,"_ the first male says. _"This is just business, and it ain't none o' yours."_

_"That's a nice hint of Irish you got in your voice, there,"_ the second man says, calm and sure, a second laird on Henry's turf, and Henry feels a growl building in his chest.   _"An raibh do mháthair ag múineadh tú é sin?"_

There is silence, and then - _"Fuck off,"_ says the first voice, suddenly shaken. _"You don't know_ nuthin _ ' about my mother!" _

_ "Go mbeadh sí a bheith bródúil as tú inniu?"   _ The strangers voice continues to be even, and the sharp incisiveness of the question comes through into the Gaelic even though the accent is completely American.

The bar is silent, and Henry slips through the back entrance to take stock of the situation.  

Vera and Daisy are both behind the bar; all of the stools and chairs are up except for one, and the mop is out.  They really had been only a few minutes from leaving.

The two men are standing between the women and the door; the first is most like the further away, a broad-shouldered, red-headed thug with what appears to be a baseball bat.  Henry feels an internal spurt of irritation at that.   _ What, they couldn't have gotten a crow bar?  Or an ice pick?  Surely, there was  _ something  _ more cliched!   _

The other man is anything _but_ a thug type; he's small - surprisingly so, considering the authority and pitch of his voice; blond; and his hands and feet abnormally large, as if he still has a growth spurt coming, or has been starving.  He stands in the middle of the room, his hands, in loose fists, slightly out from his body, as if trying to make himself bigger than he is.  His shoulders are down and calm, and Henry can tell from both of their postures that he is meeting the first man's eyes.  

It's the red-headed stranger who drops his eyes first.  "No," he admits hoarsely.  "No, she wouldn't."  

The little blond man says nothing, and Henry doesn't move from the shadows.  

The stranger looks up again, shaking his head, and when he speaks his voice is helpless.  "It hardly matters now, huh?  Couldn't get out if I tried."

The blond is already shaking his head.  "Could," he corrects.  "Could leave the city - for another city, or for the country.  Could go into the church - maybe just for a while, there's this monastery in Jersey lets lay people do retreats there.  Could join the army, that's what I'd do; but then, my father was a soldier, and I'm a scrappy son of a gun."  

He doesn't look like a scrappy son of a gun; he looks like...  Henry has a sudden flash of memory, of a priest in Salamanca during Bonaparte's conquest, calmly administering last rites to the fallen in the overcrowded hospital.  

"You don't look scrappy," says the thug, echoing Henry's own thoughts, and the blond laughs, self-deprecating.

"Well, apparently I'm incapable of minding my own business," he says, and the joke is rich in his voice because, if he  _ were  _ capable of minding his own business, he obviously wouldn't be here.

The red-head thinks about it for a minute, looking at the floor while the tense silence curls like fog around the empty bar.

He drops the bat.

"Tell Mr. Fitz," he says to Vera, "To watch out for his bar.  I won't be the last."  He looks back at the blond.  "What's your name, mister?  You just saved my soul; I ought to know who to thank."

The stranger is already shaking his head.  "Nah, _I_ ain't saving you; you're doing that, and it's going to be hard.   _ I  _ just blathered at you.  Steve Rogers."  He puts out his hand.

"Really?  I'm Steve, too, Stephen Cartwright."

Rogers tilts his head to the side.  "Which one'd you pick?"

Cartwright smiles, and he looks a lot less like a thug when he does it.  "Navy," he admits.  "I've always like the smell of the ocean."

And then he's gone, slipping out the door, and Daisy practically pounces past Rogers to finally,  _ finally  _ lock it properly.  When she's done, she swarms over to Rogers, grabbing his chin and planting one on him.  

She takes her time about it.  

"You  _ hero,"  _ she coos.  "I've never seen  _ anything  _ like that!"  

_ You're laying it on a little thick, Marguerite.   _ But if Daisy wants to make a move, Henry won't stop her.   _Although I might make a move of my own..._ He toys with the idea, weighing the pros and cons, coming to a decision as he steps into the light.  

In front of him, Rogers is finally being released, looking dazed - Henry reflects fondly that Daisy tends to have that effect on people - and Vera says, "My turn," with a teasing smile.  Rogers' eyes widen, possibly in fear - also a common effect of Vera, really, and  _ he  _ doesn't know she'd never do it - and Henry steps in.  

"That's enough, ladies," he says, voice mild.  All three jump.  

"Oh," says Vera, sounding relieved.  "Mr. Fitz."  

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Daisy, but perhaps the young man would like some room to breathe?"  He turns back to Rogers.  "Mind you," he continues, letting some of appreciation into his voice, "That  _ was _ incredible.  I owe you a debt."  The silence curls through the room again, and Rogers looks a little bowled over by them all.  Henry smiles at him - _very_ warmly.  "You don't pay for drinks here," he says.  "Ever."

Rogers shakes his head.  "I can't accept that," he says, but he's not meeting Henry' s eyes.  Henry thinks about those big hands and feet again, about how one of the things that can cause that is starving.   _It would explain the scrawny build, too..._   He wonders if Rogers rather _wants_ to accept it, but can't.   _Pride._

Henry has his own share of pride, though.  "I must insist," he counters.  "What kind of a man would I be if I accepted your aid and offered nothing in return?"  It's an argument Rogers can't help but understand, and, Henry is pleased to see, it works.  "Besides," he continues.  "I'm sure Daisy will be thrilled with the opportunity to see...  _ more  _ of you."

Rogers flushes, red sweeping all the way down his neck, and Henry watches the blush creep in fascinated delight.   _ Irish skin,  _ he thinks,  _ is always a damned temptation.   _ With that in mind, he crosses to Rogers, holding his hand out to shake and then, when Rogers takes the bait, doesn't let go.  He meets the smaller man's eyes - blue, it turns out, a startling vivid shade for a man who is otherwise rather washed-out looking.  "Daisy," he tells him, "Is hardly the only one."  

Rogers goes breathless, and looks confused, but not angry.  This could be quite a lot of fun.  

Henry's careful not to let the smile grow any larger, though, and he switches his hold from Rogers' hand to his elbow, steering him towards the door.  "Right now, though," Henry says, letting the Prince of Man creep into it, making it a subtle command, "You need to head home.  We have to close up for the night."

Rogers plants his feet, and Henry stops, too, astonished.  

"I can't," Rogers explains apologetically.  Henry has another sudden memory, this one of a child, perhaps ten at the oldest, refusing to budge until Henry finds the loose dog.  The same child, Henry remembers, whom he had seen squirming around in a pew the night he put down a horde of red caps drawn by the gang violence, and the same child - he remembers with a mental growl - whom the corrupt priest at Rose's orphanage had been targeting.  

And then he remembers, with a jolt, that the last of those incidents had occurred  _ five years ago.   _

"I promised," Rogers is saying.  He looks barely old enough to drink and yes, he would have been the right age when Henry was throwing Father Nico’s corpse into the river.  "Miss Daisy doesn't have anyone to walk her home, and I promised I would."

_ He's trying to find that damned loose dog again. _

Henry looks at Rogers, whose feet are planted like tree roots, but whose legs are the size of twigs; and then he looks at Daisy, with seven inches and easily sixty pounds of muscle on him, who used to break horses all day on the fancy farms outside of Savannah.  

He  _ could _ try feasibility, and ask Rogers if Daisy lived close to him.

He  _ could _ try the tack he'd taken back then, and ask Rogers if he'd accept Henry walking her home, instead.  

He  _ could _ call Daisy on the  _ bullshit  _ which was asking Rogers to walk her home in the first damned place!  

In the end, he doesn't do any of it.  He shrugs, letting go of Rogers' elbow and touching his chin, instead, just enough to bring head up as if Henry were going to kiss him.  "Until next time, then," Henry says, and walks away.  

 

* * *

“I am going to  _ lick  _ that little man’s  _ face  _ off,” Daisy swears the next night, bouncing in her enthusiasm.  

Henry is beside her, unlocking the cash register drawer and putting in change.  “I’m not sure he would appreciate being called that,” he notes.  

“I don’t care, Mr. Fitz.  He’s a  _ darling,”  _ she answers, and Henry can’t help but to agree.  “Did you see the way he stood up to that guy?  So calm, like nothing could touch him.”  

“It was remarkable.  Do you know what he said to him?”

“Not a clue.  And his eyes!  They’re so blue, they’re like… like the ocean or something!”

“The sea, maybe,” Henry disagrees, thinking vaguely of nights a century past spent swimming in warm waters.  “The Atlantic is rather murkier, but the Mediterranean, down by Greece, it’s about the right color.”

Vera rolls her eyes at them.

“The way he squared his shoulders!  And he’s so  _ slight.   _ I want to run my hands down the curve of his spine, just  _ over  _ and  _ over  _ again,” Daisy enthuses.  

There are bar customers staring at them, those close enough to overhear the conversation.   _ Well, Daisy  _ is _ being very enthusiastic.  As she does.   _ But one of the patrons looks less offended and more interested, so Henry makes a point of smiling at him charmingly.  The man’s eyebrows go up and he smiles back.  Henry slides him another screwdriver free of charge.

_ It’s always nice when I don’t have to go out for dinner,  _ he  thinks.

“Did you notice his hands?  Artists hands,” Henry points out, closing someone's check and turning around to raise an eyebrow at her.  “Very long fingers.”

“You know,” says Vera thoughtfully, “I bet he is an artist.  He seemed pretty observant, noticing the guy’s accent like that.  Could be an eye for detail.”

The bell over the door chimes faintly, and Rogers himself enters the bar, looking shy but hopeful.  By silent, mutual agreement, all three of them change the subject, suddenly talking about the workings of the bar:  Do we have enough bourbon for the evening?  What about soda water?  

“Oh, look, we’re short on peanuts,” Daisy says brightly.  “Mr. Fitz, you know those boxes’re _ so _ heavy; would you be willing to go get those?”

Henry gives her an amused look to let her know he was on to her game, but heads for the stock room, anyway.  As he reaches the back door, he hears her asking, “Hey there, handsome!  What can I get you to drink tonight?”

* * *

The interested man with the screwdriver, Henry learns, is named Sasha; his eyes are gray, and he has a hint of an accent.  Henry is escorting him through the back door of the bar, to the stairs up to the apartments, when Daisy dashes up to him.  “You need to lend me some coffee,” she tells him breathlessly.

“I beg your pardon?”  

Daisy grips his arm with surprising strength.  “Steve’s walking me home tonight,” she tells him, “And I am going to invite him up for a drink.  But I have just learned that Steve prefers coffee to tea, and I can’t stand the stuff, so I don’t have any.  That means that  _ you.   _ Need to  lend _ me. Some. Coffee!” _

Henry shakes his head and removes his arm from her grip, about to explain that he can’t drink it, either, although he does actually have some for guests, when Sasha asks beside him, “What on earth is this fascination with the boy?  He looked so… ordinary.”

Henry takes his arm, pulling him towards the stairs.  “I’ll bring the coffee down later,” he tells Daisy.  

If Sasha can’t see how extraordinary Steve is, Henry hardly feels like being the one to tell him.  

Or, for that matter, like letting him stick around, after.

* * *

The next day is Sunday, and the bar is closed; the day after that is Monday, and it’s Daisy’s day off.  So it’s Tuesday before Daisy struts in, five minutes late for her shift and smugger than a cat that ate an entire coal mine’s worth of birds.  Vera’s gone tonight, so Henry is the one who checks that the gentlemen drinking gimlets in the corner are going to stay there (they are) and that no one is going to walk in for a while (they’re not), then sits her down on a stool, pours her a glass of chardonnay, and says, “Tell me.”

She smiles, smug, and leans her chin in her hands.

* * *

_ She and Steve are in ramshackle hallway outside her door, and neither one is saying anything.  She watches him bite his lip, digging the toe of his shoe into the carpet like a schoolboy, and blurts out, “Do you want to come inside for a drink?” just as he says, “Can I kiss you goodnight?” _

_ That’s  _ adorable.

_ “Of course you can,” she says, “But come in for the drink first,” and he laughs and follows her through the door.   _

_ She drops her coat across her favorite armchair because she wants him to sit on the couch.  She’s lucky enough not to have a roommate right now, although she’ll have to get one next season when the tips dry up, so at least she doesn’t have to worry about being interrupted.   _

_ There’s an awkward moment while she starts the coffee (Henry had stuck it in her purse around midnight with a fond shake of his head, then - because he’s secretly a very kind man - sent her home early) and Steve excuses himself to the toilet.  When he comes back, she directs him to the couch and places a cup of coffee in front of him.   _

_ He says, “Thank you,” and goes to drink it, but then stops and sets the cup back in the saucer, instead.  “You, uh…  It’s a very nice place?” _

_ Daisy looks at the peeling walls, the door crooked in its hinges.  “Right,” she says, and he laughs again.   _

_ “Sorry,” he says.  “It’s just, uh… I’m pretty terrible at this.” _

_ Daisy gives him her best Georgia Peach smile and takes his hand.  “Well, you were pretty amazing last night, so I guess some fumbling now means you still have a good average.” _

_ “It’s just…”  He lifts the coffee cup and sets it back down again.  “You’re  _ so  _ beautiful, Daisy, I don’t even know how to say…  And you’re so kind, and generous… I just can’t imagine why someone like you would even, y’know…” _

_ She feels her brows knitting together in confusion.  “Why someone like me would… what?” _

_ He says, ducking his head in embarrassment, “Why you’d even be interested in someone like me.” _

_ Daisy’s astonished.  “Are you joking?” _

_ Judging by the look on his face, he is absolutely not joking. _

_ “Steve.  Don’t you know how _ gorgeous  _ you are?” _

_ And now he thinks  _ she’s  _ joking. _

_ “Oh god, you don’t.  Steve, you’re beautiful, sugar!  Mr. Fitz and I waxed rhapsodic about your face to each other for five minutes tonight, I promise.”  He doesn’t believe her.  It’s right there, right on  _ that face:   _ He thinks she’s blowing smoke up his ass, and he doesn’t like the feeling.  She tries to think what else she can tell him to explain it.  “And you’re so brave, you were like a white knight standing up there.” _

_ “No, c’mon, anybody woulda done that.” _

_ “No, they wouldn’t.  Mr. Fitz was there, and it was his bar, and he still didn’t do it.  And he sure wouldn’t have done it like you did it, because you used your brain.  You listened to that ma, and figured out that he was Irish, and started talking to him in that other language…  You’re bilingual, right?” _

_ “I ain’t exactly fluent,” he protests.  “Some friends of mine in the orphanage, and I, we found out we all could speak some Irish, so we worked on it as a kind of code for getting away with trouble.”  He takes a sip of his coffee, finally, but then quickly sets it and the cup down on the table. _

_ “Steve, I can’t even speak ten words of Creole, and my whole family speaks that!”  Which was something Marguerite Jackson would say, not Daisy Fibonacci, but hopefully Steve would forget she was supposed to be Italian.  “You’re amazing, Steve, you really are.  What I can’t think is why someone like  _ you  _ would date someone like  _ me.” 

_ “Why  _ wouldn’t  _ I?” Steve goggles at her.   _

Because I’m seven inches taller than you, and that’s three inches too tall for anybody,  _ she thinks.   _ Because I’m flat-chested.  Because my hair is too frizzy.  

Because my skin is too dark.  

_ But maybe he hasn’t figured that out yet, so what she actually says is, “Because I’m pretty forward, Steve.  A lot of folks would say I’m loose.”  And that’s true, too. _

_ “If anybody does say that,” Steve scowls, “You just point me at ‘em.” _

_ If anybody does say that, Daisy is pretty capable of taking care of it herself, but she doesn’t mention it.  “That’s just what I mean.  You’re always willing to stand up for other people, aren’t you?  Even if…”  She swallows.  “Even if you’re wrong.  About me, I mean.” _

_ He blinks at her, starting to reach for the coffee but then clenching his hand in a fist in his lap, instead.  She spells it out for him:  “I didn’t invite you up here for coffee, Steve.” _

_ “That’s probably for the best,” he says, smiling very nervously at her, but not backing away.  “It’s terrible coffee.” _

_ Daisy smiles broadly, then leans in and kisses him, gently.  She’s half afraid he’s going to draw back, but he surprises her and doesn’t, instead leaning into it, lips  _ so  _ gentle on her mouth, like she’s being kissed by a flower or the wind or something.  His hand -  _ And thank you, Mr. Fitz, for pointing it out, now I can’t  _ not  _ look at his fingers _ \- comes up to brush over her cheek, all delicate, and she leans in more, deepens the kiss, pressing firmly against his closed mouth. _

_ His other arm comes around her waist as she licks him, and he opens up all obedient even as he pulls her in tightly.  His arms are wiry, but they're doing a good job holding on to her.   _

_ They kiss and kiss for what feels like forever, swaying back and forwards over on the sofa.  The hand on her cheek is stroking, brushing the cheekbone over and over, and she realizes her own hands are rubbing on his chest and running up and down his spine, just the way she’d told Vera and Mr. Fitz she wanted to.   _

_ Eventually, he makes a noise like pain, and she pulls back.  Hell, she needs a minute herself.   _

_ “Steven,” she says, gasping, “I would really like it if you stayed the night.” _

_ His slim frame is heaving.  “I think you should know I’ve never done that before,” he tells her, but he's nodding. _

_ “I figured that out,” she says.  “But I’d be honored to be your first.”   _

_ He stills and meets her eyes, and even in the low lights she uses, she can tell how blue they are.  “First?” he asks, wrestling with something.  Then he nods, resigned.  “Yeah,” he sighs, then smiles at her again, looking like she’s precious, the way her mama used looked at her baby sister, who was born sick and died before she could walk.  “Yeah, all right.  I’ll stay.” _

* * *

“So then what happened?” Henry asks, amused, after pouring another round for the businessmen and taking it over. 

“What do you think?”she blusters.

“I think you’re not telling me everything,” he answers her, and she blushes, the rush of blood putting roses in her olive cheeks.  

“He asked me to go steady with him,” she admits.  

“Before or after you sucked him down like an -”

_ “Mr. Fitz!”  _ she objects, pretending to be scandalized.

"- Italian soda?"  

She smirks, “Afterwards, of course.  I kept him pretty busy before.”

“And what did you say when he made this offer?”

* * *

_ "I don’t know, Steve.”  She bites her lip and fiddles with the blanket, pulling it up over her knees because her feet are cold.  He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her, his bare skin gleaming silver in the moonlight.  It makes his hair look almost white.   _

_ It also makes her want to fill the silence, and she finds herself babbling, trying to explain it, trying to put the sense of freedom she loves about living in the city into words that will make sense to a man who has lived here all his life, but doesn’t want the same things.   _ _ “I’m just…  I don’t think I’m meant to go steady, I’m not  _ built  _ to be somebody’s girl,” she finishes, shaking her head.  “I never want to belong to somebody else, ever again.”   _

_ Steve rolls over, brushing a kiss over her forehead, and she shoves him around until he’s lying, face-down, in her bosom.  He talks into her breasts, anyway, the words coming out comically muffled.  “I never wanted to be the kind of guy,” he says, “who would use a girl for foolin’ around and then leave her once he got what he wants." _

_ "I'm sorry," she says futilely, and he shrugs.    _

_ “That way of thinkin' assumes that the girl wants to be kept.”  He pulls his head back and smiles at her, sadly.  “You said ‘first,’ earlier.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “You said you were honored to be my first.”  He puts his head back down, tilting it sideways so that he can still talk clearly.  “I think that’s when I figured it out, because if you’d meant ‘only’, you’d have said something else.  You knew there’d be others.  Or, I mean, you were assuming there would be others.”  _

_ She’s glad he’s all tucked in down there; she doesn’t want to meet his eyes right now.   _

_ “It’s okay," he tells her.  "You changed my thinkin' a bit, that's all.  Like I say, being picky about not leaving a girl presupposes she wants to keep you, and if you don’t, that’s your business.  I would have liked to have taken you out, but I mean, this isn’t exactly a hardship.  I mean, I could've backed out, and there's a reason I didn't, you know?”    _

_ He looks up, smiling into her eyes, shy but rock-steady confident at the same time, and throws her own words from earlier back at her.  “I’m honored that you were my first."   _

_ She watches him gleam in the reflected light from the street, then smiles, bright and broad like New York itself.  "If you want," she offers after a minute, "We probably have time for me to be your second, too." _


	3. Antepenultimate

  
Steve is back for the first time, a month after he and Daisy had… well…

He breaks off that thought and tries again.

Steve is back for the first time in a month, and he has begun to notice that Fitz’s Bar is _different._  

He’s been trying to give Daisy some space, and also taking some for himself, because he’s never done this before, and he’s not sure how to act.   _Although,_  he can’t help but remember, _Daisy hadn’t seemed too worried about it._ But still, it’s been a month - a little more than a month, really - and he hopes she doesn’t think he’s a cad - but the first week he’d had work, and the second week he’d been sick, and the rest of the time he’d just…

Steve sighs.  He’d just been chicken, if he’s being honest with himself, and in the privacy of his own mind, he can at least do that.  

But all the trepidation in the world is not enough to overwhelm the cold hard math of free drinks, and Bucky’s out with a girl again and Steve _is not_ going to be joining them, because as nice as Daisy was to him, there have been _dozens_ of girls who have turned him down flat, and he is not going to be setting himself up for that again.  And he can’t stay at home drawing any more, either.  That’s what he does the rest of the week, and although it's restorative and renewing for him to spend time just making art, it also wears him down in other ways.  

So going out without Bucky is the right call to make, and if he’s going to be doing that, there’s only one place he can go.

Hence being back at Fitz’s.

Daisy sees him at the door and hops right up to him, throwing her arms around him.  “I’m glad you’re back,” is all she says.  “Come have a seat next to us.”  And she leads him to a bar stool right next to the register.

“Poor little bunny,” Vera laughs at the expression on his face.  “Were you scared she’d be angry?”

“Angry!”  Daisy seems mad now at the very idea, passing the drink Vera's made him in front of him with a clink.  “I’ve got nothin’ to be angry about, sugar!  I was afraid _you_ were angry!” she tells him.

Steve smiles at her.  “Not angry,” he says with certainty.  “Definitely not that.  I was af - _worried,_ I was worried that you would be upset, and, well... “  He plays with his Manhattan - the first he’s had, they’re really pretty good - and searches for words.  “I guess I’m just not used to… to how this goes,” he says with a grimace.  

“Well, it goes like this,” says Vera with the calm authority of a mother of five.  “You come in here, you have a drink, you tell Daisy her dress looks pretty -”

“It _does_ look pretty - ” he objects, but she rides over him.

“ - you say hi to Mr. Fitz when he comes down, and you don’t stay away for two months next time!”

“I didn’t stay away for two months _this_ time.”

“And let’s keep it that way.”  With an imperious nod of her head, she sweeps off to deliver some run-down looking men in ill-fitting suits some beers.  

Steve looks back at Daisy.  “It _wasn’t_ two months,” he mutters.  

She pats his hand.  “I know it wasn’t, sugar.  Have some peanuts.”

* * *

Not half an hour after his arrival, the bar swells full, and the girls are hopping fast, not even able to get out to the far-flung tables because they’re so busy filling orders at the counter.  Steve is grateful for his front row seat, without which he’d be squashed in the crush of bodies.  He’s a little surprised that Mr. Fitz hasn’t come down yet, but the girls both assure him this is normal.

He looks around the bar, watching the people, and that’s when he begins to see it:  

Two girls in dresses, leaning into each other, speaking into each other’s ears.

Two men, one with a neatly pressed suit like a businessman, the other with the rumpled appearance of a manual laborer, speaking and laughing, body’s facing each other fully, instead of side-by-side, despite the two sitting on neighboring seats at the bar.  Their knees bump together, but neither appears to notice.

A third man walks up to a fourth, looking him up and down with a smile, then says something short and simple.  The fourth man nods, and the third and fourth men leave the bar together.

A fifth man makes eye contact with Steve, and Steve cuts his eyes away, stunned.

By the time the streetlights are all lit in outside, Steve is squirming in his seat, heart fluttering in his chest like a butterfly.  He'd love to say that that's the arrhythmia, but it's not - not this time.   But Daisy and Vera are far too busy to talk to him, and anyway, Mr. Fitz is really the one he would want to go to with this.  Furthermore, Steve’s sure that when Mr. Fitz came down, he’ll be just as busy as Daisy and Vera are.

Forget this, he decides.  Sitting in a crowded bar with no one to talk to really isn’t much better than sitting at home, anyway.  Steve has his dark moods from time to time, when sitting alone in a bar is just the thing for him, but tonight isn’t - wasn't supposed to be - one of those nights.  

He’s trying to think how to excuse himself without implying he’ll be gone for another month when Daisy cries, “Ah nuts, Vera, we’re out of Old Overholt!”

“Fine, then when I get a minute to breathe, I’ll go in the back and get it.  Whoever it is, they can just _wait a damned minute,”_ Vera snaps, and the two men trying to thrust money into her face both get the message and fall back.  

Steve looks down at the remains of his Manhattan, almost certain he knows where the last of the Old Overholt ended up.  “If you tell me where it is,” he offers, “I’d be happy to go grab it for you.”  

“We can’t let you do that,” Daisy objects.

“The hell we can’t,” snorts Vera, and tosses him a key.  He fumbles it, but is able to grab it off the floor without too much bother.  “Through the back door, there’s a set of stairs, it’s the little room under there.  Grab us some more peanuts while you’re at it.”

“Only fair, since I ate most all of the peanuts, anyway,” he says.  He didn’t actually eat that many of them this time, but it makes the girls smile.  He slips out the back door of the bar and finds the liquor closet exactly where Vera had said it would be, tucked in under the stairs.  Steve slips the key into the lock, then reaches up to pull the string on the light as he steps in.

His first thought is, _Bucky would go insane to see this._

It’s like toy store for grown ups in here, all the different sizes and shapes and colors of bottles.  Steve imagines it as a witch’s cave, all the potions lining the walls.  Or an apothecary, and Juliet is getting her deadly draught right where he’s standing.  

Steve’s jaw drops, and he almost wants -

“What are you doing?”

His head snaps up, and he sees Mr. Fitz standing in the hallway behind him.  Odd that he hadn’t heard him coming, but then, Steve’s hearing isn’t that great. 

“They’re out of Old Overholt,” Steve tells him, and reaches up to grab the brown bottle with its creamy label, dark lettering.  It’s sitting next to a dark bottle with a red label on one side, and a clear one with a white label on the other.  

“That’s an interesting declarative statement,” Mr. Fitz observes.  “But it doesn’t explain what you’re doing.”  

Now that’s just deliberately obtuse, and Steve gives him an irritated, scolding glance like his mother used to give him when he pretended he didn’t know why she was mad.  “I’m bringing them some more, of course.” 

He spots the barrel of peanuts, along with an old can labelled “Peanuts Only!”, and starts to scoop the legumes into it.  

Mr. Fitz sighs.  “Like this,” he says, suddenly very close behind Steve, and Steve steps to the left to let him in, juggling the bottle of whiskey.  Mr. Fitz feels odd by his side, like he should be radiating warmth, but isn’t; every hair on Steve’s arms stands on end, and he shivers.  He can feel his pulse going faster and faster, and he takes a deep breath, knowing that once that starts, it can take minutes to hours to quiet down.  

Mr. Fitz takes the can from Steve, setting it on the surface of the peanuts like a boat on an ocean, and then his big hands - surprisingly large for such a short man, he only has a couple of inches on Steve - dig into the barrel, taking a large portion, maybe half a gallon’s worth, all up at once.  He transfers the majority to the can, and the rest just plop down in the barrel again; messy, but harmless.  

“Oh,” says Steve.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Mr. Fitz smiles over at him, “If it gets the job done.”  He nods up at the Old Overholt again.  “Grab two; if we’re as busy as it sounds, we’ll go through them.”

Steve can’t hear the bar at all from here; maybe his hearing is getting worse.  He grabs both bottles and follows Mr. Fitz with the can of nuts back to the bar, being sure to lock the liquor room behind him.  

“Thanks, Steve,” Vera greets him warmly when he gets back in.  

“My pleasure,” Steve says, and means it.  “I was gettin’ bored anyway.  Can I help with -” He waves a hand at the crowd.  “- All of this?”

“Apparently, I should be raising my prices,” Mr. Fitz says, noticing the crowd, eyebrows up.  

“Can you pour beer?” Vera asks, and Mr. Fitz’s head snaps around.  

“Are we drafting him now?” he demands.  “That’s how you plan to show our gratitude?”

“I’m happy to help, Mr. Fitz,” Steve says earnestly.  “I really am.  I was just sitting at home, otherwise, and I don’t know any - I mean, I’m not that great at making friends.  It’s good to be useful.”

Mr. Fitz turns to him, scowling, and Steve wants to take a step back, but doesn’t.  Finally, Mr. Fitz nods.  “Alright,” he agrees.  “Pour the beers, they’re ten cents each, and then send the patron or the money down to me on the register.  But,” he specifies, and Steve sees that his smile is sardonic, curved, and confident.  It kind of reminds him of Bucky, to be honest.  “Only on one condition:  you must call me Henry.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and suddenly his heart is going a thousand beats a minute, and he’s breathless with it.  It makes him barely audible, so he tries again.  “Okay.  Henry.”

It’s fun, Steve’s surprised to learn.  He pours the beer, and sometimes people pay him, but sometimes they go down and pay Henry.  The girls are nice when they order, and the guys are, too, looking into his eyes and smiling.  Steve spends a lot of time blushing.  

By the time the crowd dies down, it’s just after midnight, and Steve realizes abruptly that his feet hurt.  He hangs on for a while after that, still pulling taps out of loyalty, but it’s not five minutes before Mr. Fitz spots him flagging.  “Go, sit,” he’s instructed, and he does, gratefully.  

He’s been drinking all night, finishing first the Manhattan - which was darned good - and then topping off a rocks glass with samples of the three beers on tap.  He confirms that he’s not a big fan of beer, but he’s awfully thirsty, and takes sips of the lightest one available while he works.  So he’s warm, but not particularly tipsy at this point.

His heart’s gone back to normal, so that’s good.  Maybe the beer helped, but even if so, he still isn’t loving the thought of drinking any more of it.  

Even as he’s thinking it, a glass drops down in front of him.  It’s filled with a clear, carbonated liquid, and a slice of orange and lime on top.  Steve looks up into the warm hazel eyes of Mr. Fitz - Henry - who says, “Gin and tonic.  More tonic than gin, to be honest.  Most places do it without the orange.”

Steve, who has previously stuck to whiskeys and bourbons, has tried gin once.  He did not enjoy the experience.  He’s also drunk tonic water, and didn’t like that much better.  But the drink is a kindness, and he’s thirsty, so he takes a sip.

He blinks, and takes another.  

“How is that possible?” he asks, taking a third.

Mr. - Henry’s eyebrows go up.

“I don’t like gin _or_ tonic, how can I like them together?”

“The gin is sweet,” Henry says, and Steve meets his eyes again.  

“Sorry?”

“The gin,” Henry repeats.  “It has sweetness with a bite.  The tonic has bitterness and effervescence.  Without the sweetness, the tonic is too bitter, and without the bitterness, the gin is too sharp.”  He shrugs.  “Most good cocktails are like that.  Vermouth is disgusting on its own, but it’s essential for that Manhattan you had earlier.”

“That was also really good,” Steve admits.  “I might be becoming a lush.”

“Not if you only come in once a month,” Henry smiles at him warmly, and Steve flushes.  

“That was…”  He fishes for something to say, especially since Henry is Daisy’s boss, and while Steve doesn't get the feeling Henry is one of them, there are a lot of guys who would fire her for that.

“None of my business,” Henry says calmly.  

Steve plays with the orange slice on his glass.  

He thinks about Daisy, and the pressure of her mouth last month.  About the way she looked scared right before she declined to step out with him.  He thinks about Bucky, out right now with some girl whose name Steve will never bother to learn, because she’ll be gone in two weeks.  Thinks about Henry, and the high tilt of his eyes, the gleam of his ruddy hair, patiently accepting Daisy, even though he had to know she wasn’t at all what she seemed.  

Thinks about Bucky, sticking by his side right up until the girls arrive.  Thinks about Father Nico, wherever he went, and the way he’d rubbed up against Steve in his office behind the sanctuary.  Thinks about virtue, and what it looks like.  (Probably not like Father Nico.)  

Thinks about the way the girls had smiled at him tonight as he poured their beers.  Thinks about the way the men had.

Thinks about Bucky.  

“Okay, then,” he says, coming to a decision.  “Speaking of things which are none of our business, here’s a question which is none of mine.”  He keeps his voice low, so low he himself can barely hear it, mindful that, although the place is emptying out, there are still people there.

Henry raises an eyebrow.  

“Is this a pansy bar?”

The eyebrow shoots considerably higher, and Henry leans forward, propping his weight on his elbows, leaning into the bar between them.  “You’ve come in here three times, and you still don’t know the answer to that?” he asks, amused.

“I wasn’t really lookin’ around the first two times,” Steve explains.  “And this time I was a little busy.”

“Hmm.”  

Henry looks at him, measuring and considering him.  Then he pours off a little bit of soda water and drinks it, thoughtful.  “They used to be far more common than they are,” he says finally.  “Pansy bars, that is.  Not even that long ago, only a few years.  If I’d been faster, I could absolutely have been running one.

“But that era is over, and people are afraid again.  There’s been a crackdown on such establishments.  Arrests get made, now, instead of just talked about.”  He sips his soda water.  “But the ones who get arrested,” he continues, “Are the men dressed as women, and the men offering… well.  Services.”  

Steve nods, to show that he knows what “services” means.  He does.

“The offering of services is a private matter, and I can spot a plainclothes cop fairly easily.  Which just leaves the men in dresses.”

“Haven’t seen any of those in here,” Steve observes.  

“And you won’t,” Henry tells him, voice even.  “I had a choice, when I opened this place.  I could let such men enter -” He pauses, corrects his phrasing.  “No.  I could let men enter _dressed in such a way_ \- or I could refuse them.”  He broods into his drink, then shrugs tiredly.  “At my age, I know the value of choosing my battles; I chose the easier path."  Then, incidentally, he adds, "The bribes to open such an establishment these days are outrageous.”

Steve watches him take a sip of his soda water, still leaning on the bar.  Henry’s eyes are half-lidded, and Steve is startled to realize that the expression he’s seeing is _guilt:_ Henry had _wanted_ to admit those men.  He felt bad for not doing it.  

He takes a long swallow of his gin and tonic.  “So it’s not a pansy bar,” he says, setting the drink down.  “It’s just a bar where it’s safe to be a pansy?”

Henry meets his eyes, broken out of his funk.  “Precisely,” he smiles.

“Okay,” Steve says, nodding.  “Thank you for telling me," he adds, because his mama’d always told him to mind his manners.  

Daisy is at a table, and Vera has ducked out to the liquor room to start restocking before close.  Henry lets the smile fade off his face.  “That reminds me.  Steve, there is one favor I must ask of you.”

“Sure.”

“The girls are going to give you some money.”  Steve opens his mouth to object, and Henry holds up a hand.  “Take it.  Please.  That’s the favor.”

And here Steve’s already gone and said sure.  “All right,” he sulks, “but why?”

“Pride,” Henry says, unexpectedly.  “They feel - rightfully so - that you pitched in and became part of the team, tonight.  If you refuse to accept money for services rendered, it implies you believe yourself above such a thing.”

“That’s not it at all!”

“I’m aware of that; hence, my asking you to accept it.”  Henry takes Steve’s chin in his hand again, like he had that first night, tilting Steve’s face towards his.  “Sometimes there’s more than one side to an issue, Steve.  Honor theirs in this one.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve says quietly.

Henry lets go of him as if burned.

Before he can lose his nerve, Steve adds, “I have a favor to ask of you, too.”

Henry tilts his head to the side.  “Ask it.”

“Basically, I want to live in your liquor room for a while.”

* * *

“Aw, c’mon, Stevie, you never come out with us anymore!”

“Busy,” Steve says, throwing his arms around Bucky’s strong waist, then grabbing his supply case from where it sat by the door before the return hug can really get started.  “I’ll be home late,” he calls over his shoulder, rocketing down the outside stairs.  “Don’t wait up!”

“I never do,” Bucky calls after him as he pelts down the street.  

* * *

When he gets to the bar, he waves to Daisy, who thrusts a gin and tonic into his hand and waves him towards the back door.  Steve slips out, dragging a chair after him just as he has for the preceding three weeks.  He sets the chair upright three feet from the liquor room door, just far enough from the wall that the person in apartment 1A can get out, just far enough from the stairs not to restrict access, and balances the drink and his supply case on it.  The hall light, bright and golden, burns above and slightly behind him.  

Steve unlocks the liquor room, propping it open with the peanut can.  Then, from where he has stored it just inside the door, he takes a drop-cloth and his easel.  

Henry has graciously allowed Steve to use his apartment to store the wet canvases, but there’s a stack of clean ones prepped and ready for his use already stored with the easel.  Already, Henry is tolerating some fifteen in-progress paintings from the last three weeks, and Steve intends to add another one tonight.

It’s going to be a cave, Steve thinks, setting up.  He’s never been in a cave himself, but he’s seen pictures of them, once, in an issue of _National Geographic._ He’s heard that, not long ago, people started having their parties in the deeper caves, because the temperature was always comfortable, and because they were unlikely to be visited there by the police during prohibition.  

That was what originally gave him the cave idea, and he does have one cave-and-bottle painting already, waiting for him upstairs, propped against Henry’s couch.  In that one, the bottles of liquor march across one wall, a study in perspective as sure as _School of Athens_ over the left half of the painting, the shelves that hold them ramrod-straight, the bartender in front of them the only well-proportioned figure in the work.  The other half of the painting shows just such as party as those he’s heard about, amorphous figures in sparkling dresses and the thin white lines of a suit mixing and mingling like demons.  The center holds a single man, reaching to buy a drink, his hand clear around the coin, the rest of him blurred and dark.  

Steve’s proud of it, proud of the way the humble servant - the bartender, hard at work - is the only heroic figure, while the shallow elite appear shadowy.  But there are other things to paint, and this morning, out swimming with Bucky, he'd had an idea.  Two hours at the library later, and the idea had cemented in his mind, until he couldn’t wait for the sun to set enough for the light to be right in the hall, here.

He works steadily, neither fast nor slow, afraid of smears from rushing, but with insufficient time for fussing.  

First, with pencil, he draws on the outline of the piece:  the small, feminine form near the front right edge of the painting, only an outline with a hint of her curves.  He doesn’t shade it, but when he paints, she’ll be covered in shadows which, nevertheless, make it clear that she’s naked, her hair streaming over her breasts.

The lake takes up most of the rest of the painting; it’s viewed from above to make the woman seem smaller, more isolated.  The upper edge of a cave’s entrance, rough rocks around the hard lines of stairs, edges the painting on the top left corner, balancing the woman’s figure, and he draws it in with rough, quick strokes.

The man on the stairs of the cave is tiny, wizened, and he’s turned so that his shoulders are precisely aligned with the bottom edge of the painting.  His head is turned towards the woman, and his neck shows his longing, but his feet are moving towards the interior of the cave.  

Between the woman and the stairs is the lake, the surface of which reflects the inside of the cave.  

It won’t be just bottles in this one, Steve thinks, drawing in the shelves.  No, there will be books - lots of books, and he’d stared hard around the library so that he could remember how they fell.  And stranger things:  skulls and bones, chests, mysterious piles of fabrics.   Definitely a globe, because it’s always been satisfying to paint spheres.  

The shelves themselves are probably straight, but in his painting, they’re reflected in water, and the water ripples, distorting them.  They’re lit by a central fire, whose light hits the lake in the top right corner and fades away as the lake spreads around it.  

When he starts to paint, it’s all navy blue, forest green, bright gold and orange.  Some of the books are the brown of leather, the bottles popping pale green when the orange light hits their blue glass surfaces.  The man and the woman he leaves in pencil for now, working hard to pin down the shades on the watery potion-maker’s shelves while he still has the light and the bottles.  

Dimly, Steve notices the roar of the bar's evening crowd, which had come in when he did, is fading, the voices dropping from a collection of shouts down to muffled speaking voices.  But the shelves are all filled in, now, and he moves on to the fire itself.  He whimsically adds a cauldron above it, one of the old leather ones.

He leans forward a bit to clean his brush in the can he’s hung from the easel, and as he does so a voice asks, “Who are they?”

He stumbles, trips over the drop cloth, and falls.  

Henry only laughs a little as he helps him up.  

“My apologies; I didn’t mean to startle you.”  He nods at the painting.  “With all of that between them, I can’t imagine that it ends well for them.  You must be thinking of someone in particular, though.  Who are they?”

“Merlin,” Steve says, looking down at the ground.  “And Nimue.   I’ve always imagined him as a dusty researcher, and his magical tomb was really a trap baited with books and other knowledge.  Then, when he went in, she closed him in with his studies, and he was so absorbed that he didn’t notice for hundreds of years.”  He looks up at the clutter lining the watery shelving of the picture, and adds, “And a lot of versions of the legend say that she and the Lady of the Lake are one and the same.”

“Hmmm.  Not the Mallory,” Henry points out.  Somehow, Steve thinks wryly, it’s not a surprise that Henry’s read _Le Morte D’Arthur._  

He turns to study the painting, Nimue’s lonely form at one end, Merlin’s longing retreat into the cave at the other.  He looks at all the shapes that Steve has put between them, the potions, the globe, the skull, the books…  “If she looked at him like that and he turned away,” Henry says quietly, “maybe he deserved to lose her.”

“Maybe,” says Steve, subdued.  “But a lot of the legends say that his desire for her disgusted her.  Maybe he _knew_ that, that she didn’t really want him, and he chose the cave because he couldn’t stand to watch her hate him anymore.  Maybe the half-comfort of knowledge and loneliness was better than the despair she was causing.”

Henry tilts his head to the side, thoughtfully, studying Steve rather than the canvas.  “Perhaps,” he agrees after a minute, and returns his gaze to the painting.  “She is looking at him, though.  Here.”

“Yeah, well, _he_ doesn’t know that,” Steve grumbles.

Henry studies the painting, and him, turning between them for a minute in silence.  “You should add a fairy,” he says suddenly.  

“I should what?” asks Steve incredulously.

“A fairy,” Henry repeats.  “Or an elf.  Hidden on the shelves, amongst all the books and potions.”

“A tiny person with wings?” Steve asks, confirming.

“In outrageous costume,” Henry agrees, and then his eyes soften.  “To show that, if Nimue is going to turn up her nose at Merlin - who, by the way, has been nothing but generous to her - someone else might decide he’s worth her while.  Now it’s ambiguous:  possibly ending in despair and death, but also with a chance that Merlin will find someone... unexpected.”

Steve looks up at him sharply, feeling his eyebrows draw down, because it sounds like Henry is saying…

 _And why not?_ Whispers a little voice.   _Were you waiting for someone else to notice you?_

Steve’s not stupid.  And anyway, he remembers where he got the idea for this particular painting.  He looks at the form of Nimue, still black-and-white in the lower right-hand corner, but when she’s painted, she’ll have full, dark hair, broad shoulders, impossibly smooth skin…  A full, dark mouth and blue eyes, even though it will be difficult to see at the angles he’s painting.  

His heart is pounding again, and he rubs the heel of his right hand against it, trying to soothe the nervous rhythm before it really gets going.   _I’m not really nervous,_ he reminds himself.   _It’s just the arrhythmia.  It only_ feels _like I’m nervous._

He says, “Sure,” and picks up his smallest brush.

It doesn’t take long, one of the red-bound leather books becoming the red dress, the golden writing on its spine becoming a necklace and hair swirling around a tiny, pointed face.  Impulsively, Steve changes his mind at the last minute, opting for pale, amber eyes instead of green ones.  Working as finely as he can, he crafts her expression, mischievous and avaricious, looking at Merlin like he’s her dinner, in a way that reminds him a lot of Daisy, to be honest.

It feels a little like giving up, a little like settling.  But on the other hand, it doesn't feel like running away.  He knows he would curse himself for a coward if he backed away now.

And it doesn't feel like loneliness.  He's had his fill of loneliness, he really has.

So when he's finished the pixie, he rinses his brush off carefully, the takes the canvas off the easel, holding it carefully by the unpainted corners.  Henry begins helps him break down his painting setup, putting the easel back in the liquor room, rolling up the drop cloth.  Steve sets the painting to the side,  then carefully stores his solvents and paints back in their case.  

Then, wordlessly,  he follows Henry upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes!  
> 1) Gin and tonic is delicious with an orange slice. I got started on it by a friend, and was instantly hooked.
> 
> 2) Henry's drinking habits: I seem to recall the original series had Henry not able to eat or drink anything. I've decided here that that's untenable, a) because he works in a bar and if he doesn't eat or drink anything, someone's going to notice, and b) because it makes LITERALLY NO SENSE. So I have him able to drink water, because that's one of the components of blood anyway, and soda water, which dissolves to sodium (naturally occurring in blood) and HCO3- (also naturally occurring in blood). Personally, I think he can also do tea and fruit garnishes, but I tried to leave those out of this fic.
> 
> 3) Pansy bars: That's a technical term, not a slur. I tried doing research into the gay scene of the 1930's; some actually made it into this fic, and this is one of those. Apparently, the 1920's and early 30's was where it was at for gay bars; the late 30's and 40's saw a lot of them shut down, increases in police raids, etc. This fic is set in 1939 (with the last chapter edging up to early-mid 1941), because I wanted Steve barely 21 (born in 1918), so it definitely missed the boat on that. I quickly realized, when I started looking into it, that if I tried to do what I would consider "good research" on the era, I would go down the rabbit hole, and never write anything. So I did "smattering" research, tried to include appropriate details as incidentally as possible, and if I messed something up, please feel free to tell me in the comments, and I'll fix it if I can. 
> 
> 4) Henry's stupid face: I absolutely don't accept that dark-haired, Heath Ledger-esque impostor they cast in the show. I couldn't do it, and I couldn't watch the show, and one isn't the *cause* of the other, but it is a *partial* cause. I just. He's not even blond! What's up with that?!  
> So, I went and actually looked for a picture of Henry Fitzroy. [It's a little young;](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/70/5c/e5/705ce5eda0037914928806d50ff23aea.jpg) painted while he's a teenager, and he's wearing a mob cap in it for some reason which, I admit, I didn't look up. Also, the writing declares him to the be "duck" of Richmond. This never fails to make me giggle, and frankly, we DESERVE the fic where he really is.  
> Then I went looking for Henry Tudor, hoping for a picture which looked enough like that young round one to be a likeness, but enough like a grownup/real person to be useful. [And I hit paydirt.](http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/tudors/images/a/ac/16309dafe6dce50a9b55cf8f2d860cdd35963b47c5d5dc72d3828ca2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140221022322) (If I'd known Rhys-Meyers was in it, I'd have been watching _The Tudors_ a lot sooner. Yum.) So my Henry looks like that, only goldener and stockier.
> 
> 4) The paintings he does here is called _Merlin betraying Nimue,_ and the one with the bar on one side and the party on the other is called _The Hard Work of Our Leaders,_ because Steve is a little shit. He also does one of Juliet, called _A Day in the Life of an Apothacary,_ and starts the series of paintings off with Vera and Daisy, leaning towards each other, talking about something happening at the other end of the bar, and you can just see in their faces that they're clever, and wise, and a little fast (in Daisy's case), and very fond of each other. It's called _Modern Delphi,_ and you can see the shadow of Henry lurking in the corner, only his red-gold hair visible.  
>  I almost started the painting-series in here with Socrates, buying Hemlock, and decided it could wait and be its own fic, on account of Steve and Socrates woulda been BROS. Like, SO MUCH. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am.


	4. Prelude

_I can still back out,_ he thinks.  

Part of him _wants_ to, wants to get cold feet and dodge back downstairs once the painting is stored.  He's never done this with a man; he's had offers before - particularly once he was seen regularly entering Fitz’s - but never from someone who knew him.  And Steve's never been interested in the anonymous.

So yeah, it's a new horizon, and it's frightening.   He acknowledges the nervousness to himself as he sets the painting carefully on a side-table, the too-fast pitter-pat of his heart for once not out of place.  

Henry turns, standing next to the low sofa.  “Would you like a drink?” he offers, and Steve leaps on the distraction.

“Do you have one?” he asks, surprised.

Henry’s brows go up, genuinely surprised enough that he doesn’t _fake_ the surprise.  “Why wouldn't I?” he asks, and there's something on his voice that tells Steve there is actually a reason there, something Henry is - metaphorically - hunched over, growling protectively.   

“I thought you were a teetotaler,” Steve admits.

 _Now_ Henry is faking surprise.  And also restraining himself from laughing at Steve, because Henry is, as Steve has noted before, a gentleman.

“Steve, I run a bar.”

“Yeah, but you never drink anything there,” Steve argues.  “Just soda water.  Why have it in your house if you're not going to drink it?”

“My guests drink it,” Henry says, his voice oddly even, as though Steve is threatening him.  

Steve quirks a smile.  Thinks about asking how often Henry has guests.  Decides that that's a terrible idea, and says instead, “So I'm your guest?”

Henry's answering smile is small and scorching.  “I would like you to be,” he says, voice mild and intense, all at once.   “But I hope you know that there is no obligation.   You are welcome to continue painting here, even if your canvases are the only parts of you to stay here longer than ten minutes.” His voice goes even more subdued as he adds, "You're a marvelous artist, Steve."

Steve snorts.  “I'd love a drink,  thanks,” he says, because he’s already made that decision, three minutes ago, downstairs.  Henry inclines his head like a prince before going to the kitchen and pouring him a glass of sherry.  “Thank you.”

“Have you ever had it before?”

“Sherry?”

“Of course.”  Lie; that is not what Henry was talking about.

“No.”  Sherry was a little too high class and a little too feminine for him.  He takes a bracing sip, finding it to be, much like Henry, dry and intense, rich and sweet, and stronger than expected.  Steve takes a bracing breath, deciding not to prevaricate.  It’s not really his style, anyway.  “Neither,” he clarifies.

“Ah.”  Henry watches him as he takes another drink, this one slightly larger than a sip because he knows it’s not bad, now.  He rolls it around in his mouth, tasting the robustness of the beverage, and Henry’s watching him do it.  

Henry’s watching his _mouth,_ actually.

“I take it this _is_ something you’re interested in, though.”  Henry’s voice is dark and rich, compelling, and Steve feels his heartbeat simultaneously speed up and even out, the irregularities settling into something staid, but rapid.

There’s something melodramatic about it, and Steve, because he’s a stubborn kid from Brooklyn at heart, kicks back against it.  “Well,” he says, and he’s not _deliberately_ trying to sound like Bucky, exactly, but he ain’t exactly fightin’ it, either, “Maybe not the sherry.”

Henry’s eyes are _burning;_ apparently he likes sass.  “Then,” he instructs, “you should put the glass down.”  

Steve finds that he has put the glass down, and blinks; Henry has moved faster than he would have thought possible, and is suddenly in Steve’s space, one hand cupping around the back of his neck, fingers brushing the hinge of his jaw.  His mouth, Steve notices, is lush, lower lips slightly plumper than you would expect, but narrow, so that Steve is briefly reminded of Betty Boop.  

Then he leans in, and now Steve knows that his mouth is also cool.  It still burns, though, pressing against him, and he gives a little gasp because he really didn’t expect that.  Henry’s other hand, his right, wraps around Steve’s waist, and he pulls Steve in towards him, so strong that Steve is momentarily breathless, stumbling forward half a step.  

Steve doesn’t know what to do, where to put his hands, and whether to lean in and deepen the kiss or not.  He kind of _wants_ to lean in, but that means resting his whole body against Henry’s, and that sounds both wonderful and torturous.  He’s not sure he could handle it, being pressed against all that stocky strength.  

He winds up settling his hands around Henry’s biceps, which makes Henry give a little pleased noise, and gives him something to grip.  

Henry pulls away, breathes out tipping his forehead down the two inches to rest against Steve’s, breath gusting over his mouth.  It’s odd to ascribe emotions just to _breath,_ but Steve thinks this breathing sounds satisfied.   

“Come to bed?” Henry asks, hopefully.  

“Yes,” Steve says, and tilts his head up towards Henry’s again, opening his mouth for the kiss this time, standing on the balls of his feet to press their mouths together.  Henry’s right hand tightens again, but then Steve’s hands do, too, so that the men are leaving bruises on each other at the hip and arms as their mouths meet, Henry’s tongue brushing deeply into Steve’s, and Steve sucking on it like a butterscotch candy.  

Henry makes another of those little wordless sounds, and Steve moves one hand up from his arm to wrap around his neck, hanging on, staying in the kiss even as Henry draws back for air.  

Henry responds by _picking him up,_ which Steve really hadn’t realized he could do.  Steve’s legs automatically go out to wind around Henry’s waist, which is…. Wow.  New, and different, and _intense,_  the grasping feel of his legs _holding on_ to something, but also the invasive feeling of there being something  _between his thighs_...  He feels his head tilt back, trying to sort through all the sensations running through his body: 

The surprising taste of Henry’s mouth, surprising because it _isn’t_ a taste, just clean and flavorless, with a hint of dryness from the soda water.

The feel of Henry’s bulky arms and shoulders moving under his own hands and spindly arms.  

The feeling that Henry’s _got him,_ that he’s not going to let him go.  

The feel of Henry’s heartbeat, steady and oh-so-slow for a man who is giving semi-breathless gasps and huffs.  

And the feel of Henry’s erection pressing against him where his hips wraps around the taller man. It should alarm him, or at least seem bizarre, for so many reasons - he’s never done this before, and it’s supposed to hurt, and it’s a sin - but none of that seems relevant, now, and all he feels is electrified, ready to go, to jump, to explore something new.

Henry carries him like that, wrapped around him like a monkey, through to the next room - Henry’s bedroom, presumably.  He drops him on the bed, and Steve falls, toppling over.  He picks himself up immediately, though, starting to take off his shirt and handing it over to Henry to hang somewhere (folded on top of the dresser - thoughtful).  Henry’s tossing his own clothes in a pile, heedless of their quality, and seems delighted to watch Steve strip.  

“So,” he asks, as Steve goes for the button on his trousers.  “You’ve never done this before.  Do you have any idea what you want?”

“You,” Steve answers, getting the buttons open and shucking the pants like he’s a banana.  “I want to feel the way your gaze makes me think I’m going to feel.”

Henry almost drops the undershirt he’s holding, and has to re-fold it.  “I can do that,” he promises, voice dark.  “Anything else?”

Steve hesitates, then snaps a little in frustration.  “Just ask whatever it is you’re tryin’ta ask.”

Henry laughs a little, his quiet laugh, the one that sounds real.  “Top or bottom, Steve?”

Steve blinks up at him, aware of a chill from lying on top of the covers in only his boxers, and of a flush from looking at _Henry,_ buck naked and folding his trousers up for him.  “I dunno,” he admits.  “I guess I’d assumed…”  

Henry doesn’t fill the blank in for him, just lets him fumble through it.

“I mean… I’m smaller than you.”

“And so _very_ pretty,” Henry agrees.  He doesn’t pretend not to take Steve’s meaning, thank god.  “Is that what you want, though?” he goes on, musingly.  “Because I’d be happy either way.”  He crawls onto the bed with Steve, running his hand down the outside of Steve’s thigh as he goes, then bringing it down clutching Steve’s shorts, stripping his last layer.  “And you seem like someone who could stand to work out some frustration.”  

That’s true enough.  Steve gets a mental image of what it might be like, thrusting into Henry the way he had with Daisy, and his eyes cross.  

Henry laughs at him again, then grabs something out of the nightstand drawer.  “Let’s do it that way this time, then,” he suggests.  “And we can reverse it the next time.”

“The next time,” Steve repeats, freezing under him, then shivering all over like a dog getting out of the ocean.  “You want me to be your fella, Henry?” he asks with a little grin.  

Seems pretty ironic; he’d expected to be stepping out with Daisy, but she only wanted the once.  He’d expected it to be a one-shot with Henry, but he seems to want to stay together.

Steve also doesn’t really believe it; Henry’s been too sudden, for all he’s been dropping clues this whole time.  But that was definitely an invitation to come back, and they haven’t even done the first time, yet.

“Not exactly,” Henry tells him, which doesn’t really clear things up.  “I’d love it if you were _one of_ my fellows, though,” he continues quietly.  “You are…”  Henry ducks his head into Steve’s neck, and Steve’s eyes cross again at the feeling of Henry’s smile.  “You’re quite amazing, Steve.  You are…”  

His hand rises and brushes across Steve’s cheekbone, so delicately, like it’s Henry’s best effort at communication.  Steve sighs, just a little one, and turns his head quick to press a kiss into the palm of that hand.  

Henry leans in again, and now they’re making out in earnest, tongues tangling, hands gripping everywhere, it seems like.  As soon as Steve finds a grip on Henry’s waist, Henry’s hand clenches in his hair, and all of Steve’s fingers release in the sudden spasm; as soon as Henry gets a hand on Steve’s shoulder, Steve licks Henry’s nipple, and Henry lets go.  

They twist around each other, and Henry’s kissing him like Steve’s the only thing he’s had to eat all week as he sits in front of him, one knee to his chest, the other leg stretched out easily on the blankets.  Henry’s hand falls to Steve’s flat chest, to a nipple which is large and pale with a tiny rose-colored center.  He tweaks it, not-quite pinching, but something more than a rub, and Steve bucks against him.  

Henry smiles crookedly, and applies his mouth.  

Steve feels his head fall back again - clearly an instinctive response, from him - and brings it up by force of will.  It seems rude to let someone else paw all over you while doing nothing for them in return, so he sinks his teeth into Henry’s shoulder, the meaty, triangular cap of it, and hopes that expresses his feelings on the subject.  

Evidently, it does, because the next thing he knows, Henry is pulling his hand up to his mouth and sucking his fingers in.  Steve keeps his head upright this time, but he moans pretty loud just as Henry shifts his weight, causing the bed to creak alarmingly.  

He freezes.  

“Don’t worry,” Henry says, chuckling, already knowing where Steve’s head is going.  “The tenant below us is Mr. Dickens, and he’s completely deaf, although he’ll never admit it.”  He runs his hand down Steve’s until they’re palm to palm, and Steve feels himself - incongruously, considering the rest of the scene - blushing at the sight of their fingers tangling together.  

Henry raises the hand he holds to his mouth, again, and sucks in two fingers.  He pulls back, telling Steve, “Keep your hand here.”  He meets Steve’s eyes, his gaze impossibly dark, until Steve nods, then he shudders a little and pulls Steve’s other hand, the right, around.  He grabs a small bottle he’d pulled from the nightstand and opens it up, pouring a substantial portion on Steve’s fingers before returning it to the bedside table.  

Henry makes eye contact, breath coming a little harshly as he pushes Steve’s fingers down to circle around him.  Steve moans again, letting himself be loud this time.  For the first time, really - he’s always shared an apartment, first with his ma, then with Bucky, and it’s a terrible idea to make noise around Bucky.  Steve shudders a little.  

It doesn’t seem to bother Henry, who rubs Steve’s fingers around his own hole, then releases Steve’s wrist, grabbing his elbow instead and applying light pressure so that Steve gets the idea.  Steve almost doesn’t know what to think as one finger breaches Henry, slowly, not sure if there was an appropriate speed, but overheard jokes about _being fast_ having enough pull to keep him from rushing.  

It’s pretty incredible; Steve doesn’t have words to describe why the feel of pressure around his finger is so amazing, but it _is,_ dark and rich and powerful in a way that steals his breath.  He moans again, quieter this time, and draws back, then pushes forward again.

Henry shudders, shoulders shaking, and presses his lips to Steve’s left wrist, which Steve is still, obediently, holding at shoulder height.  He licks along the length of the tendon, sucking a thumb into his mouth, and Steve almost loses track of what he’s doing, except that Henry feels _breathtaking_ around him.  Henry gives him a little bite on his thumb, just a nip, really, then pulls back and says, “Use two.”

It takes a second, but Steve figures out what he means.  He presses a kiss to Henry’s forehead, which is handily quite near at this exact second, and Henry rewards him by licking his way up the seam between the index and middle fingers, then pausing at the tips, waiting.  He hitches his hips, causing Steve’s finger to slide deeper, and Steve’s breath hitches.  

He pulls out and, obediently, comes back with two, and Henry takes the first two fingers of the left hand into his mouth.  Steve moans, feeling caught and held between those two points of contact.  It’s like the world retracts, leaving him in darkness except for two points of light.  His breathing speeds up, and he works his fingers in and out, marveling for a minute at the way all of Henry’s spinal muscles seem to relax, at the wicked squeeze around his right hand, and at the easy lack of tension as Henry’s mouth moves up and down his left.

Henry’s tongue reaches out, sliding between the fingers in his mouth, and at first Steve just makes another of those helpless sex-noises, but then Henry does it again and again, sliding insistently between the fingers, separating them, and he gets the idea.  He scissors the fingers of his left hand, feeling the stretch of muscle around him, and Henry’s right hand clenches on his thigh.  Steve hadn’t even noticed that Henry’s right hand was _on_ his thigh, but now it’s pressing bruises into him, and it feels, he admits, pretty damn great.

He moves his fingers again, and again, adding a third (Henry rewards him by adding the ring finger to his mouth) and, feeling inspired, even twists his wrist so that they move in a circle within the sphincter.  Henry’s head snaps forward, so that Steve’s a little surprised he’s not choking on fingers at this point, and then he pulls back.  “Enough,” he gasps.  “Do it.”  

Steve, shaking, pulls his right hand out - Henry still has the left firmly in his grasp, and Steve has a feeling a bomb could go off around them, and Henry would _still_ have that arm held steady.  He moves forward, lining up with that circle of pink muscle…

“Wait.”  

Steve waits, only trembling a little, really.

“Use more oil.”

Steve lunges for it before Henry can move, coming back with the bottle.  Henry holds out his right hand, and Steve pours it in, putting the bottle back on the table because it’ll make a heck of a mess if it spills.  He’s just straightening up again when Henry grabs him, working the oil around his shaft and jacking it better’n Steve’s even done for himself.  

Steve’s eyes roll back in his head, which thrashes on his neck, totally outside of his own control, and Henry leans forward, kissing him, swallowing the noises he makes.  Then he pulls away from Steve’s mouth, and uses his grip to line Steve up, himself.  

“Go,” he orders, quietly, and Steve goes.  

It’s pretty wonderful.  

“Oh, God,” Steve says, letting his head fall forward onto Henry’s shoulder.  “Oh, _God.”_

He goes slowly at first, easing in and out to the quiet sound of Henry’s breath hitching, to the feeling of lush lips brushing along his fingers, nibbling, sucking.  Slow, slow, as slow as he can (not _that_ slow, honestly), he eases forward, until he’s resting against Henry, then backs out again, the suction on him almost as unbearable as the press of tight muscle.  

Then Henry braces on hand against the bed spread, shifting his hips against Steve’s and pulling his other leg up so that Steve can get a better angle, and all the breath leaves Steve’s lungs in a rush as he starts to go faster.  He sucks in air and pulls back, then forward, back, and forward…  

He’s grabbing Henry’s shoulders for balance, digging in as hard as he can, but he doesn’t think he’s leaving bruises or anything, and anyway, he doubts Henry would mind much.  Henry uses his new position to move his right hand, grabbing his own cock and jerking it, rough and urgent.  Steve groans again, pulling harder on Henry’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to Henry’s throat.  

Henry’s lips on his left hand have moved to the center of the palm again, sucking not-quite hard enough for a hickey, there, and then he moves them again, this time to the wrist.  Steve feels the bite - sharper than expected, almost painful - and more sucking, and this one probably _will_ leave a hickey, he thinks - but it doesn’t matter, because below Henry says, “Let go,” and it absolutely doesn’t mean “get off of me.”

It's got a lot more to do with what Henry said earlier, about Steve having some frustration to work out.

So Steve _does it,_ he lets go, hips snapping forward with abandon.  It feels perfect, anger and joy and frustration and bliss all in one motion, and he feels Henry arch under him as his mind goes blank with a white haze, and then he’s falling, falling…

He collapses onto Henry, lungs burning, the sound of his own shout echoing in his ears.  

* * *

There isn’t a hickey on his wrist, but there _is_ a small wound.  “Damn,” Steve murmurs, a little impressed, and too sex-stupid to mind his language.  He presses experimentally against the small wound, and adds, “I’m surprised I’m not bleeding still.”

Henry’s hand, which had been petting his hair, stills.  “Oh?” he asks.

“It’s okay,” Steve assures him, pressing a kiss to his chest not far north of a nipple before going back to looking at his wrist.  “I think I might like getting bitten,” he admits, and Henry’s eyes are _gleeful._

“I see,” he says, schooling his face into seriousness, but his voice bubbling with happiness.  Steve feels a weird sense of pride at the sound.  “Well.  I suppose I’ll have to arrange to do it more often,” he says, and runs his hand down Steve’s sweaty back to grab his butt cheek.   

* * *

They do it a _lot_ more often, after that, in all kinds of different arrangements.  There's the next time, when, as promised, Henry's on top, but there's the time after that, which was Henry's _mouth,_ and Steve's not telling anyone, but he might've liked that one even better.  Until the time after that, when it was _Steve's_ mouth, and they do that one a  _lot,_ because it turns out that Steve fucking  _loves_ it.  

(Henry asks him why, in particular, he likes that one so much, but Steve can't find the words to explain.  He tries again to find the words, the next time he does it, but he never does succeed.  It's just _nice,_ that's all.)

They rub themselves together; they use their hands.  They use Steve's legs, once, which does very little for Steve, but drives Henry absolutely _mad._ So they do it a couple more times, too; Steve sort of likes driving Henry mad.  

And Henry, remembering what Steve said that first time, indulges him, in his turn:  he bites Steve a _lot._

* * *

Even if it weren't for Henry, Steve would've shown at Fitz's Bar because of the art: Steve finishes the paintings he’s done already, coloring in Merlin, and repainting Esther’s face until she looks as lonely and despairing as he thinks she probably was - and knocks out six more, too.  

But Henry always comes by just as he’s finishing up, and while usually Henry just takes the picture from and heads upstairs to store it, sometimes he invites Steve up for a drink.  Steve usually declines the actual drink, after that first time, and oddly, that seems to please Henry.

Eventually, though, Steve’s all painted out on those gloriously colored and lit bottles.  He keeps coming around, anyway.  

Free drinks in the bar help too, of course, because free drinks _still_ isn’t something Steve’s going to pass up, even if he personally thinks he’s more than been paid back any debt owing.  But also, after a couple months, Vera tells them all she’s pregnant again, and Steve likes to check in on her when he stops by. Henry invites her to continue working at the bar up until her due date, but once tiny Eliza Maria Castle is nestled in Vera’s arms, she steps down until the baby is weaned.  

So Henry is bemoaning the need to find someone else to tend the shop, and Steve, who has just gotten fired from yet another position, volunteers for it.  

* * *

After that, it’s semi-regular.  Not every night, but once every week or so, Henry invites Steve up.  

Steve hasn’t missed that there are other guys on plenty of other nights.  He expects that to bother him, but when he waits for the jealousy, it doesn’t come, and he wonders if it’s because Henry’s a guy, or because they aren’t stepping out, or if it’s because there’s something broken in Steve.  Once or twice, it’s not a guy, it’s Daisy, and bizarrely, that doesn’t bother Steve, either.  

(In fact, as he admits to himself when he’s alone at night and Bucky won’t be back for hours, it feels good.  There’s something almost warm about the idea of Henry and Daisy doing for each other, and some part of Steve that he will never, ever think about in the light of day finds it exciting.)  

The money from bartending is surprisingly good, and Steve finds he likes the work, likes keeping everything clean and stocked and in order, all the while moving and pouring drinks and talking to strangers with the safety of the bar between them.  So he stays for a year and a half, until he gets an offer from the WPA, a chance to be a professional artist once and for all.  

He tells Henry and Daisy that night, and they make appropriately excited noises for him.  Daisy looks nothing but proud, but Henry....

Henry’s face is complicated and difficult to read at the best of times, but Steve gets the feeling that while he’s proud, too, he’s also sad, and…  Steve frowns.   _He’s made a decision?_

He thinks about trying to guess, but that’s useless, so he takes the direct approach, instead.  “What is it, Henry?”

Henry smiles crookedly.  “I should have known _you_ would guess,” he says fondly.  

“What does that mean?”  Steve can’t tell if it’s a compliment or the opposite.

“You’re far too observant, Steve,” Henry tells him, and he can’t tell about that one, either, but he’s distracted because then Henry adds, “I’ve been thinking about selling the bar.”

They are, of course, shocked and horrified.  Henry politely waits for them to finish reacting before asking them if they know what’s going on in Europe.

Daisy looks uncertain, but unhappy, but Steve knows exactly what he means.

“You’re going home,” he accuses.

Henry looks up, doing that so-surprised-it’s-real face again, and Steve knows he’s right.  “How do you know where my home is?” Henry demands, but Steve’s not gonna be distracted by non-sequiturs.  

“I don’t, but your accent puts it somewhere in Europe,” he says, “Or maybe England.  You know that’s crazy, right?  You know that the Germans are rolling over everybody?”

“Of course I know,” Henry says impatiently.  “Don’t you see?  That’s why I have to go.  And I must say, this American non-intervention policy isn’t going to get me there.”

“America will be in the war before you know it,” Steve brushes that off.  

“Maybe,” Henry admits quietly.  “But I can’t be part of the regular army.”  He meets Steve’s eyes.  “And I need to fight this evil.  It’s _too much.”_  He looks disgusted and helpless, for a minute, and Henry looking helpless is so disconcerting that Steve backs off.  

“Alright,” he says, “Alright.”  

“If I sell the bar, I don’t have to worry about finding your replacement,” Henry points out.  “And I can get whoever buys it to keep Daisy employed.”  He smiles with his mouth and with his eyes, but they're two different smiles.  

Then he pours them another round of drinks (soda water, gin and tonic, and Old Fashioned) and allows the mood to return to celebratory.  

* * *

 Notes!

* * *

1) I forgot a painting: _Esther, Preparing for the Feast_.

2) Steve's health: There is a lot of canon available to choose from on this point (and also on the point of his height, and weight; I went with 5'4" for one and handwaved the other.) One of the things that pops up a lot, though, is "a bad heart": heart palpitations, history of rheumatic fever, and/or angina. The history of rheumatic fever could have led to a valve disorder, which in turn would have led to exercise intolerance, as well as stretching of the atria causing subsequent atrial fibrillation. So all of those symptoms together would have been attributable to the fever when he was a kid. (Which, incidentally, is not genetic and therefore shouldn't have been fixed by the serum, but fuck science anyway, right?  Oh, MCU.  *sigh*)

Atrial fibrillation, which would have been the most common symptom Steve experienced (other than exercise intolerance, which is sort of background anyway because of the asthma - and, in fact, a _very_ sloppy doctor could have misdiagnosed the aortic valve disease as asthma), isn't as dangerous as you might think; people can go a week at a time in afib, and other than feeling like shit, they do fine. Duration of episodes is highly personal, varying from minutes to days. One of the biggest dangers of the condition is actually stroke, because when the blood sits around in the heart instead of being pumped properly, it starts to clot, and if it does that in the left ventricle, you can send it straight to the brain. (I would love to see the 'oh god, Stevie's had a stroke' story, but I doubt we will.)

One of the _treatments_ for afib, on the other hand, is cardioversion, which is basically where they shock you out of it, in a manner related to the paddles you see in hospital dramas.

All of which is to say that, when Henry turns Steve on by using the Voice, and Steve's pulse evens out, it's because Henry is a _walking fucking defibrillator_ who just shocked Steve out of afib _via his dick._

Well, it amused me, anyway.

* * *

 After Credits Scene!

* * *

"Come on, then," Steve says impatiently, dragging a nervous Daisy along behind him.  

 _"You_ come on, sugar," she growls at him, just as impatient, and, because she's just as stubborn as Steve is, stops dead.  "You keep saying this ain't us stepping out together, but my hair is dolled up, my face is done, and I am wearing some  _excellent_ shoes, so it kinda does seem like we're stepping out together right now.  And that looks an _awful_ lot like a dance hall you're dragging me to."

"Daisy."  Steve plants his hands on his hips - admittedly, feeling a bit like Peter Pan - and glares his best glare.  It's pretty hard to keep up, because he's awfully excited about this.  It's going to go  _so well._ "When have I ever lied to you?" he asks her, and she has the grace to look ashamed.

"You ain't," she says, her soft, Southern drawl making it all one word:   _y'ain't._  "But Steve - "

"But me no buts," Steve says, "Now c'mon, we don't want to be late."  And, before she can object, he grabs her wrist and pulls her onward at a run, even though it makes him a little breathless to do so.

When they get inside, the dance hall is _hopping;_ the other people press closely around them in that anonymous way which means they don't even see them at all as they bump together.  Steve knows where he's going, though, because he's already arranged this, and sure enough, there he is at the end of the bar.  "Bucky!"

Bucky looks up, his bourbon almost to his lips, only to set it down again on the bar with a grin.  "Stevie!  I almost thought you were gonna leave me up here all night!"

"That'd be cruel, Buck; I know how much you like to dance," Steve tells him, grinning back.  "Bucky, I want you to meet someone; this is Daisy, I know her from that bar I was working at."  He never names Fitz's to Bucky; he doesn't want to risk that Bucky's heard its reputation, and even though he'd flat forbidden Bucky from showing up while he was on shift, he had no illusions that that would stop him.  It's only because he doesn't work or go there anymore that he's willing to introduce him to Daisy.  "Daisy Fibonacci, this is Bucky Barnes; he's been my best friend for  _years,_ I just  _know_ you'll get along."

Bucky grins at her, bringing her hand to his lips in a ridiculous,old-fashioned gesture.  

Daisy looks him over slowly, eyes lingering on Bucky's face, lower face (okay, lips), shoulders, waist, and hips, before travelling just as slowly back up to meet his gaze.  "Alright, Steve," she laughs, almost purring it.  "Who told you it was my birthday?"

 _"Your_ birthday?" Bucky exclaims.  "Daisy-doll, it's  _my_ birthday next week!"

And that's how Steve gets out of buying any presents that year.


End file.
